Well, the good news is that we’re still going to have a Colorado Skepticamp this year, dangit! By hook or by crook!
I’d been a little bit worried about this. You see, months and months ago there was an organizational meeting for the event, where I volunteered with my buddy Micah to be the scheduling czar. Micah and I hashed out a bunch of ideas for improvements over some of the problems at last year’s Skepticamp, then hunkered down to wait for someone to tell us when the event would actually be, along with other little details – how many rooms we’d have, for what times, yadda yadda. Because it really is impossible to do anything for scheduling at an event if you don’t have dates and times.
And we waited, and waited, and waited… attempts at poking resulted in no response. And I admit, I’m also not such a go-getter that I wasn’t willing to do more than a bit of gentle poking. Because frankly, I’ve got a wedding I’m planning, and that’s more than enough for me to deal with right now. But I did wonder what the fate of Colorado Skepticamp would be, if the planning had apparently fallen apart, in a sort of vague “Oh shit I have to meet with a lady about flowers this weekend” kind of way.
Well, we got back on track last night with a reboot meeting, thanks to Rich and Reed and the many others that showed up. Since we’re trying to whip something together on fairly short notice, it’s going to be a leaner, meaner (okay, not meaner) deal than what was discussed at last year’s planning meeting. And I’m frankly okay with that. Something like poster sessions, or a video room starts sounding convention-esque, and that’s certainly more fancy organizing than I could handle. (And, apparently, pretty much everyone else involved could handle.) Bells and whistles also do seem to be a bit contrary to the last three Skepticamps we have known and loved.
Hopefully the crack squad that’s set on hunting up a location will have things settled soon, and we’ll have a date. I’m pretty excited.
I’ve also decided that this year, I’m definitely taking a rest from speaking. I did a presentation at the first Skepticamp and the third, so I really ought to give it a rest and let other people have the time. Which is also easy for me to say, because I don’t think I could put a coherent presentation together in time anyway, since we’re aiming for before TAM. For about five seconds, I entertained the idea of seeing if I could come up with some kind of light-hearted wedding skepticism thing, but no. The route I’ve gone has minimized my exposure to evil vendors (so unlike Kat, I haven’t had anyone try to convince me that my lifelong happiness hinged on an ice sculpture) and my close family and friends are sadly lacking in the charming yet crazy superstitious person department. And at this point in the game, I’m way too lazy to do research.
My life. It is hard.